As the level of technology increases, the options for communications have become more varied. For example, in the last 30 years in the telecommunications industry, personal communications have evolved from a home having a single rotary dial telephone, to a home having multiple telephone, cable and/or fiber optic lines that accommodate both voice and data. Additionally cellular phones and Wi-Fi have added a mobile element to communications. Similarly, in the entertainment industry, 30 years ago there was only one format for television and this format was transmitted over the air and received via antennas located at homes. This has evolved into both different standards of picture quality such as, standard definition television (SDTV), enhanced definition TV (EDTV) and high definition TV (HDTV), and more systems for delivery of these different television display formats such as cable and satellite. Additionally, services have grown to become overlapping between these two industries. As these systems continue to evolve in both industries, the service offerings will continue to merge and new services can be expected to be available for a consumer. Also these services will be based on the technical capability to process and output more information, for example as seen in the improvements in the picture quality of programs viewed on televisions, and therefore it is expected that service delivery requirements will continue to rely on more bandwidth being available through the network including the “last mile” to the end user.
Another related technology that impacts both the communications and entertainment industries is the Internet. The physical structure of the Internet and associated communication streams have also evolved to handle an increased flow of data. Servers have more memory than ever before, communications links exist that have a higher bandwidth than in the past, processors are faster and more capable and protocols exist to take advantage of these elements. As consumers' usage of the Internet grows, service companies have turned to the Internet (and other IP networks) as a mechanism for providing traditional services. These multimedia services include Internet Protocol television (IPTV, referring to systems or services that deliver television programs over a network using IP data packets), Internet radio, video, live events, voice over IP (VoIP), and other web related services received singly or bundled together.
One area of particular interest is the distribution of live events, e.g., sporting events, concerts and the like. These live events can be distributed as a live stream via cable, satellite and over the Internet. Typically when a live stream is distributed from a content provider over the Internet, it is transmitted as a unicast stream, e.g., one stream per end user from the content provider. Since the live broadcast generates one unicast stream per user viewing the event, a lot of bandwidth from the content provider's server infrastructure, as well as bandwidth in an operator's network connecting the content provider to the end user, could be expected to be used if enough people want to view that particular program. It may even be the case that, at some point, the number of viewers receiving a unicast version of the live program would need to be restricted based on the physical bandwidth capabilities available to provide unicast feeds of the program. Therefore it would be useful to optimize bandwidth usage when, for example, streaming the broadcast of a live event to lower the cost of distribution, allow for more end users to receive the broadcast and/or for improving the quality of the streamed media.
Accordingly the exemplary embodiments described herein provide systems and methods for optimizing the distribution of media content for multiple end users over Internet protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.